The Plot to Destroy Biden, According to His Biggest Fans
Some of the president’s biggest supporters on the internet blame the media — and see conspiracies against him.
Joe Biden’s awful performance at the debate and the attacks on his candidacy? Blame CNN. Or a Jeffrey Epstein-related coverup.
That’s the kind of sentiment that can be found in a corner of the internet where some Democratic activists and influencers, along with those who prefer more outlandish theories, are arguing that Biden is not only fit to serve, but under attack from a media essentially ordered to take him out. Call them Biden’s strongest foot soldiers. Or, as they’re sometimes derisively referred to on X, Blue MAGA, for their unflinching support of the president and their dismissal of punditry or polling data that doesn’t support his case for staying in the race.
Some of these staunch Biden defenders are out and out conspiracy theorists; others stick to more familiar media criticism. What links them is their insistence on savaging news organizations, journalists and even Democratic lawmakers who continue to raise questions about Biden’s age and his ability to beat Donald Trump in November. Biden’s biggest fans — who once used viral clips from MSNBC or CNN to attack their enemies online — now count those networks and many print and digital publications (including this one) among their nemeses.
It’s the culmination of years of anger among Democrats — first with how Hillary Clinton’s brief illness in 2016 and email controversy was treated, then with how the Trump White House was covered and his extreme rhetoric was “normalized” and finally with how they believe Biden is currently being maligned. But now, frustrations have encompassed increasingly broad swaths of the mainstream and even liberal media — and include the kind of dismissals of polling data and entire news organizations more often seen on the right.
In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Trump and the focus on Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, the campaign to push Biden aside has somewhat quieted. But he’s not completely safe, with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly making calls in an attempt to ease him off the ticket. The issue, meanwhile, remains a singularly animating one for Biden fans furious with media coverage of his age and fitness.
At the tip of the spear is a small group of conspiracy theorists who have a large reach online.
A television producer named Zev Shalev dedicated an hour long “special report” to the idea that the CNN debate was rigged. In it, he claims that Biden’s voice was digitally manipulated during the debate, and that “if you are pushing a replace Biden narrative at this stage, you’re basically just functioning as a functionary of the Russian intelligence services that have been pushing the same narrative for over a year and a half now.” His report has been viewed almost 10,000 times, and while the theory that Russian intelligence was working with Trump and CNN to rig the debate feels like it’s plucked from thin air, many of the people reacting to the video are insisting that other news organizations like MSNBC should be looking into Shalev’s ideas.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a fashion and entertainment executive who once produced the Met Gala and the author of the book “Melania and Me: The Rise & Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” wrote on X that “NO ONE HAD TO SAY A WORD. CNN’s carefully considered FRAMING & LIGHTING design effectively conveyed the intended perceptions of fragility [Biden] vs. dominance [Trump] in visual composition.” Her post dwarfed Shalev’s reach; it was viewed over 6 million times.
An X user with over 80,000 followers who goes by the handle “@IvanasStairCam,” an apparent reference to Trump’s former wife falling down the stairs at her home, posted, “My guess is some top media owners were on Epstein Island. They’re taking down Biden and democracy to save their own skin.” This one had almost 500,000 views.
Not all of Biden’s biggest online proponents are spinning conspiracy theories out of thin air to protect the president. But even if they don’t subscribe to the notion that CNN messed with Biden’s voice, many do blame the network for the existential political threat facing the president.
“The viral nonsense of audio manipulation, I couldn’t vouch for,” Kaivan Shroff, a Democratic activist and commentator who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and will be a delegate for Biden at the party’s August convention, said in an interview. Since the debate, he’s been posting consistently about how the “beltway media” has gotten the story wrong, and after Biden’s Thursday evening press conference wrote, “Biden very politely just made the media look like fools. You have to bake that in to how they’ll cover this.” He posted a TikTok noting that “Biden’s debate officially broke U.S. legacy media.”
And he’s equally as frustrated with how CNN framed the debate, even if he doesn’t think it was a Russian plot. “I will say that I do think the moderation was inappropriate,” he continued. “The neutral approach … the idea that you would fact check the debate and all the lies an hour later, when no one is watching your program, is insane.”
Many of the people who ardently reject any calls for Biden to drop out believe that the corporate media writ large is responsible for the ongoing saga over Biden’s age and mental acuity.
“Wasn’t [CNN] bought out by Republicans two years ago?” Kenny Walden, a pro-Biden influencer, said in an interview. “Most of the CEOs [of corporate media organizations] have donated to the Trump campaign so I guess we can follow the money there. … If the CEO is in bed with Donald Trump and they’re telling you that your job might be in jeopardy if you don’t say anything negative about Joe Biden, I see that [they] might not have a choice.”
“[Biden stepping down] feels like a much more media generated story,” Shroff said.
“Why is this the dominant story?” Zackory Kirk, another Democratic influencer and commentator who was in the spin room as a content creator supporting Biden on debate night, asked me. “It’s very suspicious to a lot of us who are regular people in this world trying to get trusted news.” Kirk dismissed polls that show Americans concerned with Biden’s age as other products of a media ecosystem that he’s come to distrust.
This posture isn’t completely surprising; to some degree, every prominent politician and political party has rabid fans willing to defend them. But in the wake of the debate, it’s not Biden supporters versus hard-core Trump fans. Rather, they’ve completely lost their patience with media organizations that as recently as a month ago they relied on for news.
“I work from home when I’m not traveling for work, and I’m someone who has the TV turned to MSNBC from the beginning of the day to the end of the day,” says Kirk. “I have not watched MSNBC since last Wednesday. … I refuse to give them any energy or ratings.”
The post-debate frustration with the media from many Democrats may be hurting MSNBC’s ratings; they posted their lowest weekly audience of the year from July 1-7 (which did, of course, include July 4, likely contributing to the decline). And for a network that has leaned into breathless opinion reporting, generally of the liberal variety, hosts going public with concerns about Biden’s fitness has viewers they rely on like Kirk changing the channel.
But he’s not moving over to CNN, either.
“I felt as though CNN gave questions to Donald Trump that played to areas that were perceived to be an advantage for him, and the questions they gave to President Biden were questions that people perceived to be a disadvantage to him,” Kirk says. “President Biden should’ve been given a question about what’s happening in Gaza and a two state solution. President Trump got that question and he deflected.” Kirk, Shroff and Walden all admit the debate wasn’t a perfect night for Biden, but they believe he improved in the second half, after reactions had already solidified.
According to polling from The New York Times/Siena College, Biden has seen a dip in support from young people and racial minorities in key swing states due in significant part to how he’s handled the war in Gaza. But the source of the poll itself is enough for Kirk to dismiss it as likely fiction.
“I give no credibility at this point to anything from The New York Times,” he continues. “So if you want to talk about The New York Times poll, these polls, they get no credibility from me, especially when they’re within the margin of error.”
There’s also growing frustration with elected Democrats who are concerned about Biden’s polling.
Shroff recently engaged in a spat on X with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) after the congressmember wrote that analysis showing the Electoral College map was shifting right was “alarming and sobering.”
The two went back and forth, with Shroff eventually accusing Torres of an “unhinged Twitter attack” and Torres calling Shroff a “political hack.”
For those Democrats still ridin’ with Biden, the polls that don’t look good are simply a downstream effect of the media coverage. Kirk, Walden and Shroff each independently cited the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton in 2016 as an example of why they feel the need to call out what they believe is a similar dynamic this time around.
“The media is ignoring all of [Trump’s bad behavior], and it’s so obvious that there’s a level of bias,” Kirk said. “We have the responsibility to call it out at this point, because we can’t count on the media to do that job anymore, and it’s sad.”
Welcome to the final four months of the 2024 election. Sure, at least for now, it’s Biden vs. Trump. But if Biden stays in the race, it’s also the president’s staunchest supporters vs. the journalists, podcast hosts and TV anchors that they used to love — and now derisively write off.
